Monthly Archives: April 2014

The latest issue of Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2014/05-01/ continues with the conversation about the ultimate reality of our universe. The issue has a thorough and easy to read article about how supersymmetry is not yet proven and how the lack of experimental data in support of supersymmetry is in a way creating this crisis in physics as supersymmetry has been used to explain some of the paradoxes in the “standard model” of the sub-atomic world.

As the mathematics involved in these concepts is leading us to a more philosophical approach to understanding reality at this hyper-small time-space it is important to sit back and review some of the basic philosophical concepts that we are using as a matter of fact, as taken for granted. I am thinking again about the space-time concept where we are always drawn to think in a multidimensional space and a unidimensional time. I have been thinking for some time now that this way of thinking is one possible origin of mistake. At least I would argue that we have a bi-dimensional time. A time in a sort of complex plane where if orthogonal the two dimensions of time could be represented by a “real” and an “imaginary” component, as any complex number is.

Did Minkowski suggested something like this but then change his mind to the well know Minkowski space? You can read more about Minkowski space here What Minkowski suggested was that the time dimension was the imaginary axis of space-time but he only considered the imaginary component and not the real component as with time being a “complex” identity. One could argue that the imaginary part is complex when the real part is zero, but I don’t think Minkowski was thinking about it in this way, my feeling is that he was thinking about a unidirectional-single-dimensional time.

In many ways education is undergoing a deep revolution, not only the subject matter being taught today is changing keeping some basic principles, but the methodology, didactic, of teaching is changing dramatically. I can think of many reasons for this situation but one that is very important is “student attitude”. You’ll find this blog to be very insightful about why students attitude is what it is!